


Gorgoneion

by alby_mangroves



Series: It's my party and I'll fic if I want to [23]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Blood and Injury, Canon Divergence - Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Hostage Situations, M/M, Metaphors, Mythology References, Reverse Big Bang Challenge, Symbolism, and the hamfisted use thereof
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-11-18 07:54:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11286936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alby_mangroves/pseuds/alby_mangroves
Summary: The lungs were probably clear; the only blood he could see coming from Rogers’ mouth was from his busted face and not from inside his body. He ignored the through and through in the thigh. If he'd nicked the femoral artery, he'd have been dragging a corpse from the river and not an unconscious hostage.





	Gorgoneion

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks to Monicawoe, Speranza and Nonymos for helping me slap this thing into shape with beta and sense-checks, and to the CAP RBB Slack for endless sprints and cheering. Thanks also to my CAP RBB co-mods, potofsoup and kajmere, for being frankly awesome people and for making the behind-the-scenes of this challenge so smooth and easy even when we were flat out like lizards drinking. Finally, thanks to ge-chan, whose gorgeous art fascinated me from the moment I saw it.
> 
> Any remaining errors are my own and please forgive the liberties I've taken with mythology and the Greek language ♥  
> 

~ Ξ ~

His dislocated shoulder screamed in protest but he’d had worse, so he ignored it. The beam he’d been trapped under though, that had crushed something inside of him; bone fragments were scraping against each other and now _that_ was a pain with teeth, but he ignored that too.

The extent of the damage he’d sustained was slowly beginning to register. He’d started to catalogue it in his head, and that felt like standard procedure. By the time he returned to base there’d be a running inventory of everything that needed fixing ready to debrief, and he’d let the techs have it all along with the mission report - if there were any techs left after this, he thought, blinking past the smoke at everything lurching sideways, at the world burning all around him. If Project Insight was down then chances of the whole operation being blown wide open were high; even he knew that, and he was the grunt they told nothing except when, and who, and how.

But now there was a man whose face he had almost caved in with his fist, a man falling away from the sun and into the grey water below, the fiery remains of the helicarrier fanning out around him like melted wings. It should have felt like the dead calm of Mission Complete but instead it felt like he was the one falling. His insides crowded up in his throat. He should let go of the beam and go after the mission, he had to finish the job.

Instead, he curled his metal hand around the beam, dug his fingers into it and hung like a bat, watching the man fall away into the Potomac along with most of the helicarrier, the other two ships having already shot each other from the sky.

He’d failed. They had all failed. There would be no cleaning and shelving this weapon. There would be nobody left to shelve it.

In the smoke and fire and devastation no one would be watching for one man, not yet, the cover was perfect. He should have gone already. He should be going right now, _right now_ , he needed to move before he was crushed, or worse, seen, but he couldn’t look away from the falling blue-clad body. The man’s desperate words were beating themselves to a pulp against the barb-wire rolls inside his head.

_You’re my friend._

The abstract thought didn’t stick. It did not compute. It was irrelevant and shouldn’t have made his guts twist up.

He watched the body fall and it was only then that it occurred to him that there might have been more information he could have extracted from the mission, there were thoughts in that blond head which were now bleeding right out into the void. Other memories, other words, leaking unchecked. It occurred to him that he wanted to know what they were, to see if there were other things the man could tell him. Rogers. His name was Rogers, his handlers had said so and he had known Rogers, he had _known_ —

_Your name is—_

A piece of detritus broke off and he could only watch as great big chunks ricocheted off each other and pelted Rogers with debris on the way down, down. Blood sprayed from Rogers’ already ruined face and if there had still been a moment when he was going to report to base, it had long gone. He was on his own. He was MIA. He was . . . He was.

He let go of the beam and grunted as the churning, gutting pull of gravity took him and slammed him down where Rogers had sunk with a splash into the Potomac.

~ Ξ ~

He ploughed through the river surface like a black cannonball. It wasn’t so much that it was hard to see as it was hard to push his broken body around all the obstacles that were dropping into the water right along with him; mangled metal and shattered glass and enormous, burning slabs of state-of-the-art tech.

Below him, a thin trail of blood spread like ink in the water and he kicked out, followed it to the source, knocking aside Rogers’ limp floating hands and snagging his fingers into the straps of the shield harness. He pulled, air punching out of his chest in a flurry of bubbles with the effort and pain of heaving that big body around underwater.

His lungs were not burning yet, but he'd drifted deep. There was daylight dappled with hellfire not too high above them but Rogers was a dead weight, dragging down on his useless, dislocated arm, his tingling, weak fingers. They couldn’t surface here, they’d both be flattened by the falling debris.

He swam harder and did what he always did on a mission - he let the training that was deep in his bones take over and instead of fighting the current, he let it take him, let it wrap itself around them like a monster from the deep and pull the both of them downriver to the enormous concrete pylons casting shadows over the landscape and round metal grates inset into the concrete banks of an inlet.

A few more strong kicks and he’d nearly made the bank. He was hurting with the need to breathe by the time he was close enough to dig his metal fingers into the slimy concrete outcroppings at the base of the pylons but he didn’t dare break the surface - they were far enough from the wrecks of the helicarriers that the smoke didn’t give good cover and close enough to the gathering populace to be seen.

With the last tatters of strength he grabbed the rungs of a grate and pulled hard, yanking it clean off, then pushed Rogers ahead of him into the inlet pipe and finally, finally burst through the surface in the darkness, fighting for big heaving gasps of stale air.

~ Ξ ~

He braced his useless arm against where something was broken inside his body and dragged Rogers down into the dark, then pulled him into a cistern, scrabbling up a concrete lip to get out of the water. There was a vertical tunnel above, capped with another heavy metal grate, smoky sky and sparse daylight filtering through. It was a good place; there was a concrete shelf above water level and it was littered with various debris. The scent of decomposing leaves hung dank in the air but there’d clearly been heavy rains not long ago, and most of whatever had been washed in, had been washed straight out again.

He heaved Rogers up on the ledge and manhandled his heavy body to lie on its side - water came trickling from the corner of his bruised mouth. There were leaves in Rogers’ hair and stuck to his neck and he wasn’t breathing, and somehow he had to get Rogers to breathe so he would wake up and talk to him and look at him in the eyes and call him a name and— _he had to get Rogers to breathe_.

He slapped Rogers’ face but there was no reaction and he got stuck in a rising loop of panic because he didn’t know what to do, couldn’t think, he wouldn’t have to think twice about drowning someone but he didn’t remember how to help someone who’d drowned until thoughts came into his head the way thoughts did sometimes — out of nowhere just like they’d always been there, like Athena springing fully grown from her father’s brow — and he stuck his fingers into Rogers’ mouth to make sure nothing had gotten lodged in his throat, then toppled him onto his back again and pinched Rogers’ nose between thumb and forefinger. He sealed their mouths together so he could force air into him, make Rogers’ chest work, make it inflate and deflate, make it breathe.

He’d exhaled long twice, three times, before Rogers began choking on the water in his lungs and spluttering it out, coughing wet and long, then retching out globs of filthy river before finally breathing again, rough and uneven but on his own. He hadn’t opened his eyes.

~ Ξ ~

Once he was sure Rogers would keep breathing, he stood on shaky legs and looked up through the grate. He licked his lips and tasted salt and blood - not his own, he thought - and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Sounds were starting to drift in, people shouting, explosions of what remained of Project Insight. They’d be looking for Rogers now. They’d be looking for Captain America.

He staggered over to the wall and braced himself, eyes on Rogers as he rammed his right shoulder against the wall once, twice, grinding his teeth together to keep sounds in until he felt a sickening pop and suddenly his arm was working again, fingers clenching on a fistful of air, pain spreading like tingling cold fire all the way down his arm. He looked up and breathed through his nose, clenched his teeth and thought: good. This, he knew.

There was a mess of garbage and among the bracken there was a tangle of old rope along with the remains of plastic bags and bottle caps, and what he thought might have been scraps of torn fabric turned out to be a small, filthy blanket. It was too wet to burn so he balled it up and stuffed it under Rogers’ head, then went to his knees and began the work of unbuckling the straps of his uniform, carefully not questioning how his fingers knew the way.

His hands slipped in the blood as he got the shield harness and the neck of Rogers’ suit unbuckled and finally managed to tug the thing to his shoulders and unfasten it down to his ribs to survey the damage properly.

Even without the giveaway blood stains, he’d have known where to look: the sternum was a mess with a through and through. In the right shoulder, he looked for a bullet with no exit wound. His knife had gone in closer to Rogers’ upper arm - harmlessly slicing into the thick meat of his muscle - but the bullet was deep inside him still, buried somewhere under the clavicle. The lungs were probably clear; the only blood he could see coming from Rogers’ mouth was from his busted face and not from inside his body. He ignored the through and through in the thigh. If he'd nicked the femoral artery, he'd have been dragging a corpse from the river and not an unconscious hostage. He’d felt such a vicious surge of satisfaction when those bullets had struck home. Now he swallowed hard around a lump of unease and watched Rogers’ face purpling over his smashed eye socket.

There was no point digging the bullet out of his back - it hadn’t touched the lungs and didn’t appear to be lodged near any vital organs, The scorching heat of it going in would have helped sterilise the entry wound. Poking around in there was likely to encourage infection or make the casing break up while he tried to retrieve it. Rogers was tough. Strong. The mission brief had said so. His body would likely absorb or expel the thing by itself if left to its own devices. He pulled the suit back over Rogers’ shoulders and tucked him back inside the blood-stiff fabric as best he could, the straps of the shield harness holding it all together.

The rope had been a good find; he cut a good length and secured Rogers’s hands with it, then unpicked a shorter braid until it was a fistful of coarse fibres. He didn’t dare venture outside, there’d be swarms of people crawling all over the place now, so he made a nest for the frayed rope together with whatever flammable trash he could collect that was near enough to dry and wouldn’t smoke too much. Then he skimmed his metal arm along the concrete to make a shower of sparks, watching them fly over and over again until one caught on the rope, the fibres beginning to smolder and burn.

He left Rogers unconscious, his blond head nestled on its filthy blanket bed on the concrete shelf while he went scrounging for anything he could add to the little fire he’d made, driven to generate heat, to keep Rogers warm. He had to keep Rogers warm.

_You’ve known me your whole life._

It scratched around inside his head until he couldn’t bear it anymore, couldn’t grasp it, didn’t have time to dissect it. He got up and went into the first dark tunnel coming off the cistern and walked until all he could hear was his own damn breath and he couldn't smell blood, only mould and wet concrete and the noise in his head had subsided into something he could tolerate and think around. He returned to the little fire, feeding it just enough to keep it going without making it roar to life. There was nothing to do now but wait.

~ Ξ ~

The day turned into night, turned into near dawn again, and everything narrowed down to watching the shadows crawl over the planes of Rogers’ face. He’d edged closer to Rogers in the night - compelled by the stillness of him, the silence. It wasn’t right, but he didn’t know why. He kept expecting soft movements, sleep sounds. There were none, only the laboured breathing of a wounded body trying to heal, the stilted twitching of bound hands.

He’d stoked the little fire even though Rogers was sweating - he could smell the sharp bitterness of him under the filthy, blooded suit. His own body smelled just as strongly of adrenalin and pain and combat, and each time he moved, the sharp pain in his pelvis reminded him of lying trapped under the beam, watching Rogers come for him, waiting to be put down like a dog.

_I’m not gonna fight you._

They’d need potable water so he rescued a couple of plastic bottles from the trash piles and even some screw-tops to match and made his way down the underground tunnels till he found a way topside under cover of the darkest moments just before dawn. There was a track in the riverside park where people could jog or ride their bicycles and he found a water fountain easily enough, returning to the cistern with the bottles full to find Rogers’ position unchanged on the concrete floor; stolen golden fleece undisturbed. Unease crowded up into his throat even as relief made his shoulders drop.

He went back to his vigil by Rogers’ side and kept watch until, what was only hours but felt like days, weeks later, Rogers finally woke with a soft gasp, the rope around his wrists creaking. It must have been disorienting, coming to underground and laid out on a concrete slab. He watched realisations play out across Rogers’ face until Rogers was blinking his eyes clear and looking right at him, confused.

“Where am I? What is this?” He slurred, which would have made sense coming from anyone else snatched away and waking up bound in a sewer, but Rogers knew him, he’d said. But the way Rogers was looking at him now was with alarm, wide-eyed, and with absolutely no recognition.

 _You know me_ , he thought, he willed Rogers to say it even though his heart was already sinking. He’d cleaned up Rogers’ face and wiped the blood from his temple, but since he’d pummelled him with the full strength of his metal arm first, it seemed like a joke now. Bandaids on broken bones.

“You said a name,” he ground out, but Rogers’ expression only grew more pinched and wary, flitting around the cistern before coming back to rest on him. “And you said that I know you. Tell me how I know you,” he said, and didn’t care how vulnerable it made him sound. There was truth here somewhere and an eerie space inside him where _but I knew him_ scuffed softly, scratching at the floors of his mind like a body being dragged down a hallway.

“Do you?” Rogers said, voice like gravel, a strange look on his face, bloodshot and wary and done in, and so intense he wanted to look away, but couldn’t. “Do you know me?” The blows to his head must have scrambled him.

He sat back on his heels and watched Rogers in silence for a long moment until his head sank back into it’s filthy rolled-up blanket pillow and he passed out again, filling the cistern with the sounds of his laboured breathing.

~ Ξ ~

He tried again hours later. Rogers’ eyes flickered open again, reflecting the orange glow of the little fire, and he looked around, dazed, wincing in pain.

“Water,” he croaked, but could barely purse his mouth around the bottle held to his lips. He took a few swallows and wore most of the water, coughing and spattering through it.

“How do you know me? Who am I to you?” he said, but Rogers just blinked at him, the divot between his brows growing deeper even as his eyes began to drift, unfocused.

“What is this place,” Rogers gasped, “who— wha—” and that was that, right before his eyes rolled back and he’d have cracked his head on the concrete if it hadn’t been for the metal arm under him, holding his head up to drink. It was no use. Rogers couldn’t help him. He’d dragged him here for nothing. He should have pulled Rogers out of the river and left him beached on the shore where his people would find him.

He sat back on his haunches and watched Rogers’ chest rise and fall for a while, heart-heavy and weary with disappointment.

~ Ξ ~

He was still on high alert and conflicted. He was hurt - whatever had been damaged inside of him was healing, but unaided by the usual immobilisation afforded by the chair and the ensemble of technicians and medics who attended him to ensure his combat-ready condition, he was healing slower, rougher.

He was Asset Down - and he could count on one hand how many times that had ever happened to him. He was close to an opponent who could actually take him, but the vulnerable state Rogers was in, the sight of him lying unconscious and beaten all to hell bounced off the walls of his skull and came away with some faraway echo of a much smaller man: bloody and battered, yes, but lighter, knobbly faun knees and pale, narrow shoulders. It was enough to make his head hurt. He pulled his hand back when it lingered over Rogers' prone body. He did not smooth Rogers' hair away from his face. He did not wipe the blood from his mouth. He did not touch his limp hand.

Rogers' hands were dirty like his own, blood and grime smeared into every crease. They were not clean hands. He thought they'd be clean, protected by the gloves but they were filthy just the same as his.

He watched Rogers for a while and thought about resting, but he didn’t know how to start. There was a strange light filtering from high up above him and then the walls were dissolving, and where there was once a concrete cylinder above the cistern, metal bars now rose up to hold the grate over their heads. He wrapped his hands around the bars and watched the shadows of enormous metal-clad men walking indifferently past, electric blue beams shining from their eyes. He was in a metal cage full of men just like him, and they watched silently together.

Someone groaned and he looked down at a soldier lying on the dirt floor, old wounds festering.

“You have to get up,” he said, “If you fall down you’re done,” but the man wouldn’t budge and when he rolled him onto his back, dead eyes stared up at nothing. He staggered away, blue light bathing the cell and the bodies littering the floor and then they were dragging him away, and all he could do was look at the men left behind in the cell, all of them wearing his own face, resigned and dead already, just waiting for their turn to fall down.

They dragged him up to a chasm where there was a bridge and beneath it, Hell, burning, and when he turned around his captors were gone, he was alone, the whole cavern on fire all around him, explosions shaking the very foundations of the world.

The only way to go was over the bridge, and then there was Rogers right ahead of him, and he’d known it! He’d known Rogers was smaller! His slim shoulders were bare and pale and his haunches were soft with fur, faun-like, a satyr: half man and half something else, beautiful and strange, walking over the narrow bridge, cloven hooves click-clacking on the metal footplates.

He got up to follow Rogers - Steve! - but he couldn't quite reach him and it seemed that he couldn't shout to him, his throat choking on the words, _stop! It’s not safe! Don't go that way!_

But Rogers didn't stop, so neither could he, even though the terror inside him was growing the closer he came to the end of the bridge and that awful, vibrating light that made him feel sick inside, sick in his mind and his belly. He tried to run but his feet wouldn’t move and Steve was too far ahead, Steve was going to get hurt - there was a man beckoning to him, a demon up ahead on a dais, laughing, drunk on power and peeling off his false skin, his wine-red skull gleaming underneath.

 

 

Fear drenched him from fingertips to the back of his neck, and suddenly he didn’t want Steve to turn, he didn’t want to see his face, he didn’t want to know, he didn’t want it, he didn’t want to see it but he couldn’t look away, he couldn’t help looking _—_

He bit down on his tongue to stop the shout he’d woken with but it was too late. The concrete walls of the cistern vibrated with it, and beside him, Rogers was wide-eyed, distress written all over his face, his own shout still echoing alongside.

_Bucky!_

“You all right?” Rogers said, earnest. Concerned.

“That’s not what you say to your kidnapper,” he said roughly, the stone of his nightmare still lodged in his throat.

It came for him while he was still trying to catch his breath the way it did sometimes if he was left out of the ice long enough for his body to catch up: the shakes, the dry heaving - he wished there was something in his gut to expel, some evil, dark thing to force out of his insides - then, the rush of horror goose-stepping its cold and prickly fingers up his spine.

He flinched when Rogers’ hand touched him between his shoulder blades, and without thinking, between one breath and the next, he’d slid the knife out of his boot and - twisting around - yanked Rogers up on his knees with the blade hard up against his throat. The rope he’d tied Rogers’ hands with lay discarded on the ground and his wrists were chafed, the blood dry and flaking. Of course he’d been biding his time.

“You know me,” he said quietly. Rogers didn’t respond except with a flick of eyes between his, searching. “Don’t lie to me,” he said, pressing the knife hard up under Rogers’ jaw.

“I won’t,” Rogers said, his mouth bruised and bloody and trembling.

“That’s right. Because you couldn’t lie straight in bed.” He was not quite sure where the words had come from but they were there and he said them feeling like he was treading a well-worn path, gratified when Rogers gave a startled intake of breath. “Not even if your life depended on it,” he continued, letting himself fall along into an old groove carved out by the man who’d once owned and controlled his body, the man who’d said things just like this so long ago to a man just like Rogers, except so full of piss and vinegar his back teeth were floating.

“Bucky,” Rogers said, pressing up. “Bucky please, it’s Steve, I’m _Steve—_ ”

“No,” he said, shaking his head, an image, an etching taking shape in his sieve of a mind, something he’d seen long ago. “You’re Heracles, and I’m the Hydra sent to kill you.”

“You won’t kill me,” Rogers said, and of all the things he imagined, it wasn’t this, it wasn’t Rogers surging up, pushing into the blade, letting it slice into the side of his neck as he mashed their mouths together in a hard and bruising kiss.

Adrenalin rushed up from the bottom of his spine, fight or flight, making his hair stand on end all over his body, burning through his surprise at being surprised - there wasn’t much that could do that to him anymore, not pain, not the horrors humanity was capable of, not even the horrors he himself was capable of. He saw everything like he was holding a picture in his hand: blood matting Rogers’ hair to the side of his head, a bloodshot blue eye softly closing under bruised lids, and blood, there was always blood with Rogers. Leaking out of his nose and turning his lip scarlet. Skinned, raw knuckles, and fingers and knees. Blood trickling from the shallow slice in his pale neck and running down the blade of a knife.

He dropped the knife and fisted his hands in the straps of Rogers’ shield harness, the urge to toss him away and to hold him closer warring with each other as the picture turned into two, four, a dozen, until the images were blurring and moving, cards flying from a tossed-up deck and hitting him square between the eyes: Rogers angry and mean as a hornet, Rogers peacefully asleep in a ray of sunshine curled in a ratty old armchair, a book sliding off his lap. Rogers in a kitchen, at a sink, washing up. Rogers’ hands touching him, Rogers’ mouth on him, on his _—_

“Steve,” he whispered, breathing fast, barely thinking, feeling it, feeling _Steve_ trickle in through fissures in the dam in his head, filling up the holes. Steve shuddered and sobbed, _sobbed_ against his mouth and then they were kissing, really kissing, smearing their mouths against each other, none of the surprise left, only the scratch of stubble and the scent of sweat and the reality of it all, the desperation of their arms around each other, fingers scrabbling and grasping and holding on for dear fucking life.

The cards kept flipping on him; he was kissing Steve under trees and in a bed and with ash falling like snow, the flakes sitting on their hair. Steve kissed him back, in the mud and against brick walls, stretching and straining up to have him one moment and then lying over him, chest to chest, palm to palm, fingers twined together. He had been kissing Steve forever. He’d been kissing Steve since before time had any damn meaning at all.

Steve was shaking, there was no strength left in him when they finally came apart, stealing a fleeting last touch of lips, sticking dry and breathing each other’s air. Steve fell back on his elbow and hissed in pain and he’d missed it before, caught up in his own hurt and confusion but he couldn’t miss it now - Steve looked washed-out, like he’d been dipped in cold sweat. He was clammy.

“The bullet,” Steve said, scrabbling at his harness. “I think it’s still in.” And yeah, of course it was. He’d put it there himself.

“I can’t get it out,” he said. “It might fall to pieces.” But he knocked Steve’s hands away and unclipped the leather strapping on his harness, then held Steve up against his chest, easing it off of him, slow and careful. He hadn’t known he could be anything other than a blunt instrument, let alone slow. Let alone careful. he took Steve’s weight and held him closer, hands splayed wide across his broad back, keeping clear of the wound.

“I guess it’s gonna stay in there then,” Steve rasped, and he could hear the pain Steve was trying to hide. “I’ll heal up around it. It will be fine.”

But when Steve went limp, a dead weight in his arms, there was no hiding that he knew the truth, it was written in the lines of his bruised and swollen face.

It was bad. Who knew where it would travel if left to roam free range inside Steve’s body. It could end up in his lungs. It could get into his heart. “Can’t get it out but can’t leave it there either,” he said, and eased Steve back to the ground, already aching with loss, knowing what had to be done. He'd only just shaken off the leash. He'd only just woken up and here was Steve, here was _Steve_ , and it was so much, too much, the dry well in his chest, in his head, slowly filling up again when it didn’t even know it had been emptied.

He bent his head and kissed Steve’s upturned face again, kissed the salt off of him. He wanted Steve’s mouth so much even though moments ago he hadn’t even known to miss it. When Steve opened for him, when their lips parted and he could taste blood in his mouth, lick it from Steve’s lips, he was a statue breathed back to life, just like in a book, or— was there a story? What _was_ the story? Was it something he’d seen once, or read?

“Why did you play possum?” He murmured. The time to ask questions had already been so limited, and he’d wasted a big chunk of it thinking all the answers had been knocked out of Steve’s head and been near-drowned in the Potomac.

"I couldn't think straight, I didn't know what you'd _—_ I didn't want you to leave," Steve said quietly, wrapping his fingers loosely around a metal wrist. "I thought you'd leave if I pushed, I thought you were dead, Buck. I only just got you back," and he watched in horror as Steve’s face crumpled, shoulders quaking helplessly. He couldn’t say it, then. Couldn’t tell him how this was going to go.

“What you got is a bullet stuck inside you,” he muttered instead. “Of the two of us, it’s still the lesser threat.” There was no point wasting time on arguing. He knew what he had to do and he had to do it fast, before Steve healed up enough to put some real energy into resisting. He was still barely functional himself, pissing blood and nursing several broken ribs by the feel of it, plus whatever other damage he’d sustained in the fight that was busily knitting itself together inside him. They both stank of sweat, crusted blood and fear but he tucked his face into the crook of Steve’s neck and breathed in deeply. Steve’s hand was in his hair, gentling and petting him like some kind of spooked wild thing, and he let himself have that, just for a moment, before pulling away.

“Can you stand?” He asked. Steve gave him a look and reached up his hand for a boost.

~ Ξ ~

Instead of swimming out the way they’d come in, they half crawled and half dragged each other up the cistern chimney where metal ladder rungs were set into the concrete. A couple of punches with his metal fist and he broke the grated cap up above, and after a quick scope of the area, pushed himself through to sit on the lip and then pulled Steve up too.

Steve was shaking, whether from the effort or the cold, or just from being beaten half to death and drowned, then dragged down to the underworld, stolen away to a buried bunker. That kind of thing tended to leave its mark on a man. He propped Steve up as best he could with his own body working against him, fatigue and pain and nausea - withdrawal probably, though from what he couldn’t know - making him stagger under their combined weight. His hair was filthy and hung in his face but that was all right, he didn’t want Steve to see him in the harsh light of day.

They staggered up the hill and into the trees, skirting the edge of the thick cover and the bicycle path near where he’d scouted water. He eased Steve down to the ground, watching in alarm as his heavy body slid down in a graceless slump. The star on his chest had turned crimson, the points soaking up blood from where he’d put a hole in Steve’s chest.

“Let me see,” he said, blinking fast and trying to focus, fingers unerringly finding those hidden plackets and zips again. Steve was passively letting himself be pulled and pushed around and unzipped but the uniform had stuck to him and it was hurting real bad, he thought, from the way Steve had gone silent and grey, his eyes tight and glassy with it. He was breathing too fast, sucking in air. He unclipped the harness and prised the flaps of the uniform away from Steve’s chest and made himself look again, this time with his own unveiled eyes. Anyone else and it’d be a clean through and through which he’d never see again after bearing witness to the tell-tale red bloom of hitting a long-distance target, but seeing it like this, seeing the up-close raw and sticky mess . . . He’d done that. He’d done that to Steve and he’d been so satisfied with himself, so fucking proud. Nausea swirled heavily in his gut.

Steve caught him by the wrist. “I’m all right, Buck, it’s nothing, it’s stopping now, see?” Even though it was plain to both of them that it had opened up again after the struggle of climbing out of the cistern.

“For a guy who doesn’t want to bleed on anybody you sure do bleed a lot, pal,” he said, and Steve barked a watery laugh into his hand. Then Steve coughed, and couldn’t stop and he had to go, he had to find help, he had to get Steve out of the cold and back into the care of his friends where he’d be safe.

“Buck, don’t go,” Steve said, clutching at his hand, but he was faster, slapping the uniform back together again and twisting away. He wanted to kiss Steve again, but that was done, now.

“Stay here, I’ll get help,” he said, and it was better this way, even if it felt like he couldn’t fill his lungs.

“Bucky, please, _please_ ,” Steve said, trying to catch his eye, his voice breaking.

He dragged Steve up to lean against a tree and slipped away from his grabbing hands, turning away and stumbling off the path, ignoring Steve’s increasingly desperate shouts behind him.

“Captain America,” he shouted from the thick cover of trees at a gathering of emergency services workers shifting rabble up on the riverbank. Not far beyond, a small group of people were mobilising, the black-clad redhead among them, directing. He had to be careful. “They found Captain America, he’s alive, he’s over there!”

He backtracked a little, just enough, and found a tree thick with enough foliage to meld into. He climbed up and got into position, making himself still and small and numb to pain. Within moments, neon orange vests were weaving through the woods and converging on Steve’s position. He drew his last gun and braced his hand in the crook of his metal elbow. There were only two bullets in the barrel and it wasn’t a rifle with a scope, but it would do to make sure Steve was safe, that only the right people found him until the Widow could get to him.

Steve had stopped shouting but that was all right, the workers around him shocked into quiet by how bad he’d been hurt, and he could easily make out the sirens nearing even as he saw the Widow’s team finally make Steve’s position. He dropped softly to the ground and ran.

~ Ξ ~

He’d seen this place before, he realised, the Smithsonian’s white columns were quite distinct. He didn’t know when he’d last been here, but he’d grown used to the frustration at only having snippets of things, never the whole.

It was the same inside, the exhibit he’d come to see shaking loose more questions than answers. Inseparable in the schoolyard and battlefield. He hadn’t gotten the schoolyard back. Maybe he never would. As for the battlefield, there were memories of parachutes snagged in trees, bodies dangling from the lines. Dead calm in a sniper’s nest, a mosquito he couldn’t slap settling on him just under the wrist cuff of his wool coat. And then, the memories he had of Steve, his hair catching the Italian sun. The only Howling Commando to give his life. He’d given his life and his death twice over, but Steve had too and none of it stuck. The Smithsonian didn’t have the whole of it, either.

Across the hall from the Captain America installation, enormous amphorae flanked the doorway to an exhibit about Ancient Civilisations and he went in, thinking to clear his head a little, but there were questions here too, and unexpectedly, even some answers.

Here among the ancient ceramics were Heracles and Iolaus, the nine heads of the Lernean Hydra fanned out above them, ready to strike, and Theseus with his knife to Minotaur’s throat, and even Icarus, his wings melting and his mouth open in a silent scream as he fell, just the same as in a book of Graeco-Roman Myths and Legends Steve’s mother had owned. How they’d studied the stories and how they’d pored over the etchings; elegant, long-nosed gods and goddesses in drapings of fabric, armed with magnificent weapons and holding the lives of men in their hands.

Steve had loved that book and he had loved Steve and it seemed that there was the schoolyard after all: he and Steve with their shoulders rubbing together while they lay stretched out on their bellies, fascinated by the unforgiving cruelty of the myths and the beauty of the illustrations, and each other. He’d kissed Steve for the first time leaning across the open pages of that book.

And here, too, was he in the guise of the Medusa: the deadly creature they’d made to simply point in the direction of their enemies. And they could do it again except that Steve had choked the spell off of him, had as good as cut the gorgon’s head off.

A little carved plaque caught his eye, ancient letters: a curse tablet with a spell inscribed on it, a letter to the gods, begging restitution for some wrongdoing or another. It was the ending which caught his eye, promising devotion,  _ως το τέλος του κόσμου._ Below, the translation: To the end of the world.

He looked at the exhibit for a long, long time, thinking.

He made his way out of the exhibit and looked up into the doorway of the Captain America one, seeing his own face looking right back at him.

It had only been three weeks since he’d left Steve in the park, and his body had knitted itself together as best as it could on its own. He’d strapped himself with as much of an armoury as he could get his hands on without drawing attention to himself and covered it up with the kind of clothing that would ensure eyes sliding off of him.

He’d thumb a ride to New York if he could. If he got lucky, he’d be there in a day if anyone stopped for him, and if not, he’d damn well walk. Steve was out of hospital now and back in Stark’s Tower, or so he’d read in the paper two days ago. He’d go to New York and he’d find Steve, and he’d let him have the gorgon’s head, he’d turn himself in. He’d let Steve put his head in a sack if it meant he’d be out of HYDRA’s hands for good.

“All right,” he muttered, nodded to himself and went.

~ Ξ ~

It didn’t take a day. It took ten. He’d been stupid to think he’d get out of D.C that easily, they were still pulling chunks of Project Insight out of the river and the Widow’s data dump was still top of the news feeds so he stuck to the back roads and stayed out of cars and away from people and damn well walked.

He didn’t recognise the skyline when he finally got there but that was all right because on the ground, give or take a few boutique bars and an inexplicable influx of beauty salons, it was still the same dirty, stinking pit of humanity he could barely remember.

He spent the first few days on recon and scoping the detail around Steve and his team but in the end it didn’t take long to find what he needed. They were watching for a team, a concentrated effort with the Winter Soldier on point, not one scraggly, bearded bum, and he made himself easy to dismiss. A busy city was used to ignoring its tired, its poor, its huddled masses, so he huddled and waited, and waited some more, until he was sure he’d timed it just right, the moment where Steve rounded a corner one foggy morning, arms pumping, feet pounding the running track right in the shoelace tangle of paths nestled between The Lake and the Boathouse.

He stepped out from among trees and into the periphery along Steve’s path, and watched Steve come to a sudden halt.

“Too predictable, Rogers, same route every day. Don’t they teach you anything, those spy friends of yours?”

“Bucky,” Steve said, breath coming fast, and yeah, he was. He supposed he was Bucky in there, somewhere. Steve looked like he was in pain, torn between coming at him with those bear-hug arms and turning into a wooden pole fit to tie a horse to and Bucky thought he’d have to put him out of his misery, but then Steve was coming at him and then they were hugging and clutching at each other with the fog swirling at their feet.

Steve’s nose was cold pressed up against his neck, and he was fine, he was really fine, his breathing regular and his body strong, and it was almost funny how they were patting each other down, surreptitiously checking for parts that were hurt and needed care rather than for weaknesses to exploit.

“The fog’s lifting already,” Bucky said, nosing at Steve’s hair. He smelled so good, warm sweat in the brisk dawn air, so alive and vital and sweet. Bucky squeezed his eyes shut and held on. “Gotta go.”

“I’m coming with you. Where are we going?”

Steve pulled back just a little and looked at him like he still couldn’t quite believe it, and Bucky lifted his arms either side and made a point of looking around. “Beats me, pal. I’m in between places right now.”

Steve smiled and clutched him tighter, and it was like something had tugged free inside him and set to soar on the breeze. “No, you’re not,” Steve said, and took him by the hand, and they walked side by side out of the fog and into the morning.

 

~Τέλος~

 


End file.
